Sanders was busy undermining the Clinton's health reform efforts in '93 -'94, similar to today

[bigtree]

... as he works to undermine the ACA.

Despite Hillary graciously accepting Bernie Sanders' presence on a stage when she was promoting her health plan in the 90's, Sanders was pushing for his single payer plan as an alternative.

The result was then, as it would be today, if Sanders managed to become president...instead of rallying behind a majority of Democrats in advancing meaningful changes in health care, Sanders was reveling in his maverick-style advocacy of his own plan and mostly unconcerned with the fate of the Clinton effort.

No, it wasn't Sanders who brought the Clinton plan down, but he certainly wasn't 'there' in terms of helping it pass. In fact, he was actively opposing her health plan.

I'm sure that will get hurrahs from the Bernie folks here who believe single-payer is some foregone conclusion of a Sanders victory, either in '94 or today. But it's a pretty slick defense to point to a video of him standing behind Hillary and suggesting that they were in the fight together. He wasn't, he was somewhere else, off on his own keeping the Democratic party at arms length because he thought he knew better.

It's no wonder Hillary is asking where he was. Here's HuffPo:


____ Sanders thinks Clinton has it all wrong -- that he has been a loyal advocate for reform, even as he has pushed for a more liberal version of it. To prove the point, the Sanders campaign responded to Clinton’s latest jab with a video of a 1993 health care rally. In it, Clinton is speaking about the plan she and then-President Clinton crafted -- and Sanders, then a junior House member, practically couldn't be closer to her.

literally standing right behind her. https://t.co/B2cvs4UNth https://t.co/oVA6WccMmZ pic.twitter.com/QeKLnBG337
— mike casca (@cascamike) March 12, 2016

Pundits and Sanders supporters quickly seized on the video as proof that Clinton was, once again, twisting the truth. And it’s true that Sanders, a consistent and relentless proponent of single-payer reform, has never shied away from fighting against insurance companies -- or crusading for greater access to health care.

But his presence at that speech -- like a gracious letter Clinton sent him in 1993 -- isn't proof that Sanders was a major ally of the Clinton health care effort. Sanders wasn’t even endorsing the Clinton plan, unlike another member of Congress who attended the rally.

And an internal memo from the Bill Clinton administration shows that the White House was worried that Sanders might hold out. "Given his reputation for independence and his more combative style he may be of the more difficult members to get on board the Administration’s proposal,” the memo said.

In fact, Sanders opposed the proposal throughout the process, his campaign confirmed to The Huffington Post. As late as August 1994, while Democrats were making a last-ditch effort to pass Clinton’s plan, Sanders held a press conference opposing it -- and touting single-payer, according to his campaign.

Sanders' commitment, or lack thereof, to the White House plan wasn't a cause of its failure, considering staunch resistance from the health care industry, Republicans and conservative Democrats. But Clinton clearly hasn't forgotten it.


read: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/clinton-sanders-health-reform_us_56e715c9e4b065e2e3d6e14f?505jc3di

[DefenseLawyer]

1. I support single payer.

Your "attack" of Sanders for being right is lost on me.

[bigtree]

9. that's not a surprise

...I am glad that he matured and eventually coalesced with Democrats on Obamacare and voted for it. I'm less enamored of what his plans might be in the future.

[Jarqui]

56. He was still after single payer with Obamacare

But when it came down to some healthcare or none, he's always voted for what they could get - on nearly any progressive cause he favors - as long as other stuff in the legislation wasn't too over the top or grossly against his principles.

If this suggestion by Huff Post is true:

"Their spat highlights fundamental differences in what kind of president each would be."

then we're in big trouble with Hillary because her attempt at Hillarycare was a horrible, embarrassing disaster that couldn't even come to a vote.

[TheBlackAdder]

68. Good try. I don't think FAIL BLOG takes posts from DU into consideration. Make it into a meme!

[bigtree]

69. blocked

[PowerToThePeople]

72. I agree.

eom

[GreatGazoo]

2. "To Bernie Sanders with thanks for your commitment to real healthcare ACCESS

for all Americans and best wishes, Hillary Rodham Clinton" 1993

[al bupp]

3. I think, sir, that "undermining it" and arguing for what he considered to be a better alternative...

are two entirely different things.

[virtualobserver]

13. the Hillary spin never stops

this is just another Brock dropping, cobbling together insinuations.

[kristopher]

61. 2.8 million recent reasons she's can't get it done

[bigtree]

16. my impression from this and other accounts was that he did both

...actively opposed it while pushing his alternative. That's not outside of reasonable conduct, but certainly cause for Hillary to reflect on his efforts negatively.

[peace13]

4. The current program, while a first step...

....is not really insurance for most. The deductibles are too high to be useful. Single payer is the answer and he knows it!

[Lucinda]

5. Thanks much! I'd read about this earlier but never saved the link to that article...

I'm bookmarking this one!

[pangaia]

50. You do that.

[Lucinda]

55. Thanks for kicking bigtree's thread!

[Bad Thoughts]

6. More loyalty crap

There is no 11th Commandment for Democrats.

[livetohike]

7. This is his major problem of his political career. "My way, or No way."

His Presidency would be a disaster.

[Surya Gayatri]

48. ^^^This!^^^

[earthside]

58. Wrong -- right from the article:

Regarding the ACA:

Sanders and the 59 other members of the Senate Democratic caucus voted for the bill anyway. The Democratic leadership offered Sanders a face-saving amendment providing additional funding for community health centers, a priority any Democrat would have supported.

In other words, when push came to shove, Sanders set aside his principled stand for single-payer health care and instead helped enact the biggest expansion of the safety net since the Great Society.

Furthermore, the article doesn't provide any evidence that Sanders "undermined" the Hillarycare effort; he and Rep. McDermott had their single-payer proposal that they advocate for, nevertheless, they supported efforts at health care reform in the early 90s, too.

Far from a "disaster" it would be great to have a progressive president who stood by some principles, instead of trying to be a typical politician always currying favor and pandering as is Mrs. Clinton's tendency.

[Kip Humphrey]

60. THIS^^^sunshine^^^truth^^^in an unadulterated hit piece of deceit & deception.

[Armstead]

70. As opposed to the Centrist Wrong Way

Medicare would not have stood a fucking chance under today Demopublicans

[4dsc]

8. I support single payer too.

It's the right course of action.

[riversedge]

10. Well, well, so once again the Sanders camp puts out deceptive information-

this time in the form of a photo. whow.
But, the Truth comes out--like it always does.

[earthside]

62. Yes, the truth.

Read what "The Inevitable One" herself wrote on this photo:


Make up your mind ... is Hillary right about Sanders' commitment to health care reform, or was she prevaricating back in the 1990s about Bernie?

Or listen to what she said (the video from the screenshot of Hillary and Bernie at Dartmouth:
http://www.c-span.org/video/?c4536221/hillary-clinton-bernie-sanders-1993

[Jefferson23]

11. lol n/t

[WhaTHellsgoingonhere]

12. Is this Hillary's supporters' idea of Bernie trashing Obamacare?

"
Over the years, Sanders has tucked away funding for health centers in appropriation bills signed by George W. Bush, into Barack Obama’s stimulus program, and through the earmarking process. But his biggest achievement came in 2010 through the Affordable Care Act. In a series of high-stakes legislative maneuvers, Sanders struck a deal to include $11 billion for health clinics in the law.

The result has made an indelible mark on American health care, extending the number of people served by clinics from 18 million before the ACA to an expected 28 million next year."

Improving and expanding it = trashing it

Disgraceful

https://theintercept.com/2015/07/06/gop-senators-support-sanders-obamacare-expansion/

[eShirl]

24. It's the very best they've got.

pretty pathetic

[hobbit709]

14. The Spin, The Spin!!!

[dchill]

15. "No, it wasn't Sanders who brought the Clinton plan down, "

Do tell.

[delrem]

17. Oh ffs! Hillary Clinton has no health care plan in 2016.

As if she could "incrementally improve" the situation while working with Republicans, while protecting the all-important profits of private health insurance companies.

jeez, what desperation!

[djean111]

18. Hillarious how Sanders is painted with being ineffective, while at the very same time,

singlehandedly sank the Clinton proposal! Wow! Who really believes this shit?

And who really believes it is okay to leave so many Americans uninsured in order to "preserve a legacy"? That, my friends, is just sickening.

[bigtree]

20. both my comments and the article clearly state that wasn't the case

...sickening was the number of legislators who believed holding out in '94 was the right thing to do.

How many Americans went uninsured up until the passage of Obamacare? Don't goddamn forget that.

[djean111]

23. Don't goddam act like trying to get coverage - actual fucking HEALTH CARE, really - for ALL

Americans is some nefarious idea.

[bigtree]

28. look, YOU raised the issue of people going without coverage

...but it escaped you that, without the Clinton health care plan in '94, countless millions have gone without coverage.

Of course, Sanders isn't 'singlehandedly' responsible for that defeat, but he can't claim to have helped with his mavericky opposition. Here we are today with an echo of the Clinton proposal already enacted and benefiting millions. Not single-payer, but a valuable, lifesaving act which found the Vermont senator much more pragmatic in his approach, working with the Democratic administration, instead of working to undermine them as he did in '94.

[Ken Burch]

33. He didn't have to give up on single-payer to help HRC.

And renouncing single-payer on his part wouldn't have swung any votes to the essentially Republican HRC non-plan.

It was HRC's fault and HRC's fault alone that healthcare failed. Bernie is blameless.

[Bad Thoughts]

35. Many Democratic Congressmen were for single payer

Sanders was no "maverick" in this respect. According to Jim Cooper,

"I think you had committee chairmen who were for the Canadian health care system, who were to the left of Clinton," he said. "And you had the average House member who was way to the right of Clinton, and the President's proposal -- the Ira Magaziner proposal -- satisfied no one."

Many of the unions wanted single-payer. Clinton's corporatized version was drafted in secret, and the Task Force generally ignored advice from Congress, even Democrats.

[bigtree]

43. that's a good point about the controversy over the 'task force'

...but I don't remember any significant number of votes available for single payer.

And while the task force and alleged 'secrecy' may have led to the defeat of even the Mitchell compromise, the health care industry bullied legislators with their public campaign and republicans were emboldened while Democrats shied away.

The Association of American Physicians and Surgeons sponsored an ad campaign against the plan which you likely remember.

Starting on September 28, 1993, Hillary Rodham Clinton appeared for several days of testimony before five congressional committees on health care. Opponents of the bill organized against it before it was presented to the Democratic-controlled Congress on November 20, 1993. The bill was a complex proposal running more than 1,000 pages, the core element of which was an enforced mandate for employers to provide health insurance coverage to all of their employees through competitive but closely regulated health maintenance organizations (HMOs).

Opposition to the Clinton plan was initiated by William Kristol and his policy group Project for the Republican Future, which is widely credited with orchestrating the plan's ultimate defeat through a series of now legendary "policy memos" faxed to Republican leaders. Conservatives, libertarians, and the health insurance industry proceeded to campaign against the plan, criticizing it as being overly bureaucratic and restrictive of patient choice. The conservative Heritage Foundation argued "the Clinton Administration is imposing a top-down, command-and-control system of global budgets and premium caps, a superintending National Health Board and a vast system of government sponsored regional alliances, along with a panoply of advisory boards, panels, and councils, interlaced with the expanded operations of the agencies of Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Labor, issuing innumerable rules, regulations, guidelines, and standards. "


"Harry and Louise" was a $14 to $20 million year-long television advertising campaign funded by the Health Insurance Association of America (HIAA)—a predecessor of the current America's Health Insurance Plans (AHIP)—a health insurance industry lobby group, that ran intermittently from September 8, 1993 to September 1994 in opposition to President Bill Clinton's proposed health care plan in 1993–1994 and Congressional health care reform proposals in 1994. Fourteen television ads as well as radio and print advertising campaigns depicted a fictional suburban fortysomething middle-class married couple, portrayed by actors Harry Johnson and Louise Caire Clark, despairing over bureaucratic and other aspects of health care reform plans and urged viewers to contact their representatives in Congress

https://www.boundless.com/u-s-history/textbooks/boundless-u-s-history-textbook/the-challenges-of-globalization-and-the-coming-century-after-1989-31/the-clinton-administration-231/the-health-care-plan-of-1993-1317-9290/

[Bad Thoughts]

51. Shied away? How about twiddle thumbs in confusion

The lack of transparency of the task force meant that Congressional Dems were largely disengaged from the process. They knew not what was happening, they were not participating in the crafting of the reforms, and they were in little position to advocate for specific reforms that would be proposed. They were leaderless and rudderless, and went off in different directions from the task force. Sanders was a mere statistic in that who fuck up.

[bigtree]

54. you see where Hillary is giving testimony, right?

...the complaints about openness and knowledge of the contents of the bill are belied by all of the detail used to oppose its provisions. I remember those complaints coming from the republican and industry opposition - and maybe some Dinos.

[unapatriciated]

67. I had great coverage in 1994

still had to sell my home to cover out of pocket cost, first year of my son illness (1991) was around 20 thousand. Spent many more years fighting denials and reviews (where they take back payment already paid). All of this leading to my son not getting the health care needed which resulted in massive loss of muscle mass, damages to his kidneys, heart and other vital organs.

So Insurance doesn't always equate to health care access.

[Gwhittey]

21. Republican does as Republican is

Since Clinton is a RAIN (Republican Except In Name) this is how she rolls.

[Shadowflash]

19. Right.

'...instead of rallying behind a majority of Democrats in advancing meaningful changes in health care, Sanders was reveling in his maverick-style advocacy of his own plan and mostly unconcerned with the fate of the Clinton effort.'

Single payer is THE MOST meaningful advancement we can make. We would finally be brought up with all the other industrialized first-world countries and being 'unconcerned with the fate of the Clinton effort' is the appropriate response if it's anything short of that.

[NCTraveler]

22. K&R nt

[UglyGreed]

25. Hillary undermined

her own effort by being bought off now it is just outrageous dream............so she says.

[Peace Patriot]

26. Clinton thanks Sanders for his help with her health care plan, in a signed note.

Are you saying she didn't mean it? She was being a hypocrite? Somebody else wrote it? She was referring to some other Senator Sanders?

We don't know what that help was. It could have been a hundred different things in developing a plan, in trying to make it better, in trying to include some sort of public option, or giving advice on the political situation in Congress (not unknown in Washington for a party ally or even an opponent to give friendly advice on one thing, in exchange for something else).

She clearly states he gave her help--in writing, signed.

As to the merits of all this, Clinton's plan and the ACA are both hopelessly complicated for we, the taxpaying users, not to mention prohibitively expensive for many. And all the complication, and all the escalating co-pays and premiums, and wildly escalating drug costs, of the ACA, are money in the pockets of Clinton donors.

She's trying, first of all, to gain her enduring ambition to enter the White House as president. Second, she is trying to protect her donors' interest--their profits. So of course she flip-flops around, like a Mobius strip, soliciting Sanders help and thanking him for it, then, and battling against the only sane health plan, now--the only plan that truly benefits the general public, and the only one that significantly reduces health care costs, and the one that has been tested, time and again, and found successful in other countries: single payer. Proposed by Sanders.

Finally, it is a bald-faced lie to say that Sanders is trying to undermine the ACA. Those who put this overly complex, very expensive plan together are the ones who undermined it, not Sanders. The complaints against it are from the USERS, and are nearly universal. Why is it so complex? Why is it so costly? Why do there have to be middle-men, raking off profits? I hear this every day, and I'm in the health care field. Sanders is responding to what he hears from THE PEOPLE. Yeah, it does some good things. No, it is not a good plan overall. Its main structure is deeply flawed, due to profiteering.

Sanders would NEVER repeal, or seek repeal of, the ACA without having a better plan in place. He has said this. And it is obvious. He is IN FAVOR of people having health care!

And what is this bullshit about "undermining" anyway? Why SHOULDN'T a public servant criticize a public program? Why shouldn't the public object if they find it onerous or wrongly structured? That's democracy!

We don't have kings and queens here, and we don't have "sacred cows." At least in theory.

[raging moderate]

34. In the old days, we spoke of the "loyal opposition."

It was usually used to describe the appropriate relationship between Americans of different political parties. It only seems contradictory; actually, it describes the inevitable human condition. Two people can disagree about a lot of things but still love each other. Members of two parties can support each other's good intentions but still keep pushing for their own party principles in the final bill. Members of the same party can cooperate on passing a measure but keep trying to persuade each other about different details. Unlike totalitarian regimes, in this country, it is okay to disagree. Nobody is completely right about anything. Compromise is always necessary. Powerful politicians tend to get carried away by their own voices, by the big main idea that has swept over them. In the House and in the Senate, Bernie Sanders has usually played the role of a gadfly, a little voice off to the side looking for details that have been forgotten in the main effort, saying, Wait a minute, don't forget about this need and that problem, writing and negotiating for amendments to different bills to solve problems he has noticed.

[Bad Thoughts]

27. Then First Lady Clinton let no one work with her

The hallmark of the Health Care Task Force was its lack of transparency and its unwillingness to work with interested parties, including Democratic Congressmen. Many politicians, who had an active interest in heath reform, were either ignored or their advice on reform was recorded, but dismissed, by the committee. What did it mean to work with Clinton in 1993-4? Apparently it meant simply giving a blank check, not participate in crafting the bill. Perhaps if the interested parties, including Sanders, had been included in an open process, the outcomes would have been different.

[Bluenorthwest]

39. I always wondered why she shut out the large and active groups that had been protesting with

great passion about reforming all health care. This weekend when she lavished praise on Ron and Nancy, Villains of the Era, for calling attention to the very crisis they ignored I realized she had never noticed the massive demonstrations year after year, the political funerals in the streets, she'd never paid heed to the outcries and the warnings and she had no idea that other people were involved in this fight at all. She was unaware of all the activism and she thought Ron and Nancy did it all.

[Bad Thoughts]

40. Because Bill felt powerful pointing his finger at Dems? eom.

[tazkcmo]

29. He is right.

Why the rest of the world can do this but America is too stupid iust beyond me. Maybe it's because of shit like this.

[PoliticAverse]

30. If he wanted to "undermine the ACA" he could have singlehandedly done so, as it needed

every single vote to pass and he voted for it.

[Ken Burch]

31. He didn't have to renouce single-payer to avoid "undermining HRC".

She was wrong to rule single-payer totally out. Having it in the discussion would have created more space to work for other ideas. It's not as though the only way to work for healthcare was to pledge to unquestioningly support whatever she came up with.

And her right-wing, non-universal patchwork quilt plan could never have been the basis of a real healthcare system. It wasn;t possible to build anything worthwhile on the base of what she proposed.

Why are you doubling-down on what you know was a lie?

[fredamae]

32. Glass Half Empty?

Well, Mine is Half Full.
Sanders wanted a Better plan than what was offered. Ever notice how politicians are Always "glad handing" each other for legislation that is nearly 100% of the time Inadequate to address the crises it is intended to resolve?

Why criticize Any politician who seeks better conditions "For The People".
Criticism like this from Dems to a Progressive is a real head scratcher based upon their Own claims of being here "for the people".

[Bluenorthwest]

36. Bernie was right. It was not Ron and Nancy who started the conversation about AIDS, activists did

that. Health Care industry injustice and greed were the first targets of the people who actually sounded the alarm Hillary claims the Reagans sounded.

Bernie and LGBT, always on the same side, seeking the same objectives.

During the first years of the AIDS Crisis while Ron and Nancy Reagan did nothing, said nothing and hindered all progress LGBT activists took to the streets in the thousands, year after year and the first and primary point of protest was and remains the corrupt and murderous 'health care industry' particularly Pharmaceutical Cartels and Insurance Schemes for Profit.

The first ACT UP action was on Wall St 'No More Business As Usual' and 10 years later the same messages were still needed, more protests on the anniversary of the first: this action called 'Crash the Market':

MASSIVE DEMONSTRATION BY ACT_UP
HUNDREDS OF PROTESTERS PARALYZES WALL STREET
SEVENTY-THREE PEOPLE ARRESTED
NEW YORK, March 24, 1997 - Hundreds of AIDS activists from ACT_UP_(AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power) converged on Wall Street this morning, stopping traffic and paralyzing Lower Manhattan for more than three hours. The group gathered to protest price-gouging by pharmaceutical companies and cutbacks in Medicaid funding, and demanded Congressional hearings on AIDS drug pricing. Seventy-three people, two thirds of them women, were arrested for acts of civil disobedience near the New York Stock Exchange. The demonstration was called "Crash the Market."


Funding of the federal AIDS Drug Assistance Program (ADAP) falls far short of the need to cover existing AIDS treatments in many parts of the country. Meanwhile, President Clinton has proposed $22 billion in cuts over the next five years to the Medicaid program, which covers health care for the very poor (after signing last years welfare restrictions that exclude many immigrants in poverty from health coverage), and Congressional Republicans are calling for similar reductions.
http://www.actupny.org/%2010thanniversary/10th%20repor.html


As anyone can see from Hillary's crediting of Nancy Reagan for the work of those who flooded the streets demanding justice refused by Reagan that the Clintons never paid attention to the people already advancing issues of health care. Hillary shut out the very activists most involved with health care issues.

Single payer would have saved so many lives. Bernie knew what was needed. Hillary sought that which would make money for people, not that which would save lives that needed saving.

[Kalidurga]

37. Do you even...read what you post?

In fact, Sanders opposed the proposal throughout the process, his campaign confirmed to The Huffington Post. As late as August 1994, while Democrats were making a last-ditch effort to pass Clinton’s plan, Sanders held a press conference opposing it -- and touting single-payer, according to his campaign.

Apparently we can only have things if it doesn't impose on the oligarchy. Well, isn't that nice of them?

[Betty Karlson]

38. Advocating single payer health insurance is now "undermining the ACA?"

puh-lease!

[Bluenorthwest]

41. 2006- Hillary blocks the Ryan White Act renewal. Worth the read. Thanks to OP for venue!!!!!

Sen. Clinton Delays AIDS Law's Renewal, Citing Cut in N.Y. Funds
Wednesday, August 23, 2006

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton is holding up renewal of the primary federal law that battles HIV/AIDS, the 1990 Ryan White Act, causing a rift among activists on the subject and threatening approval of the legislation this year.
Clinton (D-N.Y.) said she opposes the measure because it would lower funding for her home state. But some AIDS groups also see broader political motives at work. Other states that would lose out include California, Florida and Illinois -- all places Clinton would need to win if she seeks the presidency. Her critics also note that many of the states that would receive higher funding under the new formula are rural and Southern, which tend to vote Republican.

The senator's insistence on a different formula -- one closer to current law -- has angered several groups that represent AIDS and HIV patients who stand to get more money under the pending bill. Last week, Harry C. Alford, chief executive of the National Black Chamber of Commerce, wrote a letter to Clinton that said, "It is with sadness that I learn about your efforts to block" the law's reauthorization.

Alford said that people of color, particularly in the South, are contracting AIDS at a rapid pace and need more funding than was envisioned when the current formula was devised. "I must share with you the bewilderment of African Americans throughout the country who cannot understand why you are taking this stand against opening the door to more equitable funding that will chiefly benefit people of color," he wrote.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/22/AR2006082201161.html

[Ken Burch]

42. Fighting for single-payer can't undermine the ACA.

The ACA will stay in effect as long as Bernie is president, until single-payer is passed. And it's even possible to use the introduction of a single-payer bill to get improvements in the ACA.

The worst way to defend the ACA is to settle for just defending it in its existing form.

[libtodeath]

44. Thanks for showing that as always Bernie has been on the correct side of history

He was for US the people then and now.

[Skwmom]

45. ACA which should really be called the Health Insurance Act is NOT fianancially sustainable.

Why do you think companies self insurance? Because is cost more?

[cherokeeprogressive]

46. This must be what the Titanic sounded like just before she slipped beneath the waves...

[Surya Gayatri]

47. But, but, he was RIGHT BEHIND her...she's either suffering from Alzheimer's

or lying through her capped teeth.



Yeah, he was right behind her alright, but why?
Watch your back, Hill.

[bigtree]

52. thanks for reminding me of why this fired me up in the first place

...it was exactly that vile post which I actually saw relayed in a tweet.

Are people trying to out-Trump each other?

[Surya Gayatri]

53. Is there a RW meme they're not flogging to death?

Can't think of one...

[ibegurpard]

49. when caught in a lie

Lie louder.
That's the Clintons for you.

[salinsky]

57. The release of that photo by the Sanders campaign ...

... insinuating that he was supportive of Hillary's healthcare reform efforts was disingenuous at best.

Or as Sanders supporters would say, "LIES!!!! LYING!!! LIARS!!!!".

[unapatriciated]

59. I have supported single payer since 1991

In 1991 my son was diagnosed with Dermatomyositis. I had a cadillac Insurance Plan plus catastrophic insurance. It took six months before we could even get a referral to a specialist for a correct diagnosis.

We than had many years of denials and reversal of payment for necessary treatments. The lack of proper medical care resulted in my son losing most of his muscle mass which was crippling for him.

Even though I had great insurance coverage, I still had to sell my home in order to pay for medical bills not covered. The first year of his illness I had over 20 grand of out of pocket cost.

I spent the next three years not only battling my insurance company (and dealing with a very ill child) but lobbying for health care reform in California. We got the "Fair Claim Practice Act" passed along with pre-existing conditions covered after six months.

I wrote many letters to the Clinton administration as well as my congress critters and the only response I received was from a member of congress regarding gun control.

So some thirty years later I do believe it is way past time to take the profit driven Insurance Cartel out of health care.

[ruralsteve]

63. Some wider view perspective

A few things to keep in mind, even if you (like me) prefer single payer universal national health insurance:

1) Obama's Healthcare Reform Act is a hybridization of managed private health insurance and single-payer government health insurance, the latter component being the expansion of Medicare...even though that was thwarted in several red states.

2) Obama's HCA was a GIGANTIC compromise with Republican ideas, though it was never reported as such (shame on NPR and PBS especially), and it was never appreciated or acknowledged as such by any Republicans.

3) The overwhelming majority of the HCA was invented by Republican's in the early 1990s as "the conservative alternative" to what they assumed evil Hillary Clinton's task force might be cooking up. It would force everyone (yes it had penalties similar to ones they howl now about in Obamacare) into private insurance who didn't already have it through work or something like that -- a great boon to the insurance companies who heavily donated to the GOP.

4) Why would Obama propose something like the HCA, when he must have known most Democrats wanted single-payer? Very simple, Obama from the beginning was and is a *** sort of progressively-leaning PRAGMATIST *** and never has been anything like the extreme liberal, commie socialist that the Republicans accused him being or the very liberal consistent progressive some Democrats dreamed up (all on their own) that he was. Also, to co-opt Republican ideas, after injecting some humanity into them, had been a great strategy for dealing with the GOP -- in fact, most of Bill Clinton's political success was based on it. It threw that self-important blowhard Newt Gingrich for a loop, making many a strategy of that "great GOP idea man" look stupid.

5) Could single-payer have gotten through congress in the first part of Obama's first term? Not a chance. Not only were all of the Republicans against it, too many of the Dems in Obama's congress were timid, gutless wonders, afraid to get on TV nationally or in even their districts to fight for any of Obama's agenda or to, even more importantly, dispel the torrent of Republican lies. So, of course, a lot of them got voted out by a confused electorate in 2010.

6) Personally, my wife and I would not now have health insurance if not for the HRA. Are premiums too high? Yes. Should it have activist drug price controls" And how! Still, it is the only game in town for millions who formerly had no health insurance at all...until passage of single payer becomes feasible. That could be under a Sanders presidency, but only if he goads and convinces every Democrat and independent who supports him to commit to voting in a Congress that will work with him -- and to come out in the mid-term elections in droves committed to do the same all over again!

I can't argue with Bernie calling for single payer, because I think it is really best. I can't argue with Hillary defending the merits of the HRA, since it has been such an improvement over the condition that preceded it. I can argue with Republican malarky about the HRA being a government take-over of healthcare, when they invented it and they have done nothing but lie about that.

[salinsky]

66. and, ...

Hillary from the beginning was and is a *** sort of progressively-leaning PRAGMATIST *** and never has been anything like the extreme liberal, commie socialist that the Republicans accused her of being or the neocon, corporatist shill some Bernie Bros dreamed up (all on their own) that she was.

[Viva_La_Revolution]

64. bullshit headline smells of desperation

My already good mood just went up one polling point 😄

[Hassin Bin Sober]

65. So, she was lying when she wrote that note? Is that your position?

[Armstead]

71. How fucking awful. Actually trying to have true Universal Health Coverage

Bad Bernie, bad.

Don't you know slavery is better than freedom?

[Karma13612]

73. People who don't want single payer-medicare for all:

fall into one of these categories:

1)Have employer covered healthcare with low premiums and low or no deductibles
2)So wealthy you don't care about the cost of your healthcare
3)Have fallen for the lies about how single payer will cost more than for-profit insurance-based coverage
4)You are already on Medicare

If you still don't want single payer, and you don't fit into one of the above categories, then by all means, share your story.

I still want to know why anyone in the 99% that lives paycheck to paycheck doesn't support single payer. It will cost you less than your current insurance-based for-profit rip off scheme.